I was quite brutally assaulted back in June. Ultimately, there were four people who beat me, but it all started when a ‘man’ only known as Alex rushed towards me with a 5/8 inch wooden closet pole (with a black flag on it) and bashed me over the head. The doctor told me that I was very lucky. That flagpole could easily have cracked my skull, there’s still an indentation in my scalp. They had to put staples in my head that night, and it took four weeks for me to fully recover.

The Toronto Police met me in the ambulance beside where the assault took place. I gave them a description and I had Alex’s glasses that he left behind while fleeing. I told them that I knew who two of the people involved were, but didn’t have any names. I promised to send them pictures of these two people the next day- I did, as soon as I had them. The police had everything needed to find them- except for their last names.

It should have been easy, it turns out that both of them must have been well known to the police. That is, if the police have been doing their jobs. It is hard for me to make a judgement on that until I hear their full story. Perhaps Alex is a police informant? Perhaps arresting him now would interrupt with a larger investigation? Or, maybe they’ve really been unable to find him?

Well, after today, there is no longer an excuse. Flagpole Alex’s real name is Alex Balch- I learned this after someone from London, Ontario tauntingly posted his name in the comments section of my letter to MP Andrew Cash & MPP Jonah Schein about West Toronto’s new problem with violent anarchists. Here’s what they wrote:

I brought this to the attention of some fellow researchers last night. After a couple of hour’s investigation we realized that what we’ve discovered is more than just the name of the person who assaulted me. We’ve found the Rosetta Stone for understanding relationships between the anarchists, politicians, student leaders and con-men we’ve been reporting on. One researcher, Undercoverkitty, is so excited that Kitty wrote an article talking about how excited they are. Apparently, there are some deep connections with the Canadian Federation of Students here too.

I’ll be writing a lot more about what we’ve been learning over the next few weeks. To get started, I’ll share what I’ve learned about Balch’s early years at Fanshawe College– it gives us a good idea of what his motive for assaulting me could be. Here’s a copy of his bio that was published in Rabble.ca (yes, they are deep in with the violent anarchists) in 2010.

In his past life, Balch was the president of the Fanshawe Social Justice Club (FSJC)- a group that was too radical for Fanshawe and ultimately branched off to be an off-campus group. There’s another former of the FSJC I’ve written about here- Darius Mirshahi, a member of the anarchist hip-hop act called Test Their Logik (sic). If you’ve read my stories about Darius, you will remember that he’s the husband of another high-profile anarchist- Sakura Saunders. Darius also recently appeared on-stage in Ottawa with Sid Ryan.

I’d never met Alex before, and never talked with nor had an interaction with before we met that night- so, until now, I was very puzzled what led him to decide to ambush and assault me. I’m not longer confused now- he’s really close friends with Mirshahi & Saunders, his motivation was to stop me from writing stories about their misbehaviour. And, no wonder Sakura Saunders spent so much time on the Occupy Toronto Facebook page trying to say that I deserved to be assaulted!

I drew-up a relationship chart for Balch last night- he’s connected to most of my major stories:

(click to expand, then click again)

Alex Balch is a violent thug -he’s part of a gang of dangerous people who have been actively promoting political violence on the streets of Toronto. This is the gang that brought us the violence of the G20 and in Caledonia. They are Trotskyites, they believe that violence is essential to make change, and they are hell-bent on making it happen. People in Canada’s unions and political leaders have been giving them an uncomfortable amount of assistance.

So, if the Toronto Police get their act together (Balch lives on George Street), we should be looking forward to seeing Balch off of the city’s streets. That will be a good first-step, but there’s much more needed to protect Toronto (and other Canadian cities) from further political violence. It’s time to talk to the unions, political leaders and organizations like the Council of Canadians- insist that they stop enabling what is becoming a very dangerous situation…

I fear talking to groups like the unions and Council of Canadians will do no good – exposing them the way you do is the only chance of embarrassing them into change. They are deeply connected with the people you’re talking about and fully aware of their activities.

As far as Council of Canadians goes, they are nothing more than a quasi-respectable (for those who know little about them) cover for idiotic radicals and violent morons.

It would not be out of the question that someone wanted to get even with Alex on something. When people are as extreme and narrow-minded as these anarchists it is common for them to turn on each other for what are seemingly trivial reasons.

AH, I see it was Curtis Nixon. Well, he fits the bill of “Extremem and narrow-minded” to a tee. Maybe Flagpole Alex suggested anti-abortion protesters have the right to free speech. Something like that would be sure to make Curtis Nixon very angry.

I followed the link you put with the words “Balch lives on George Street”, it leads to “Cops And Condominium”, it’s a very good article, he really gets the point across that focusing on the working poor’s often violent and/or criminal response to oppressive conditions is a tactic used to sidetrack attention from the people creating and profiting from the living conditions of the working poor, whether it’s internalized as street violence or crimes against persons from their own socio-economic class, which is what usually happens, or, more rarely, externalized against the state or the business community that is the root cause of their day to day hell. Thankyou for posting that link, hidden though it was in an article that merely fans a flame you should have been happy was burning out, and also your article still fails to address the roots causes of the problems you’re going to continue facing as long you keep trying to be an obstacle to the movement instead of a part of it. The ‘web of evil’ you’ve exposed… that’s called the movement, and you’ve missed a few tentacles because you’re focused on the groups you’ve worked with directly. The movement is diverse, that’s a strange word, I know, it means that it has all kinds of people, people who believe different things from each other.
Some of those people insist that everybody must believe the same as them on some specific issue or another, others insist on adherence to a core group of doctrines, certain positions on a range of issues they feel are related. People like that are having a negative effect on the movement. Diversity is how we win this thing. That means that a lot of different people with different skills and different worldviews and different backgrounds and social norms in regards to property, violence, etc, do what they know how to do against the common enemy, and never mind what the other guy is doing as long as everyone stays out of everyone’s way.
That is my problem with the activistocrats I met across Canada, they have a policy doctrine they’d like to shove down everyone’s throats.
That is also my problem with you and you’re tactical doctrine.
This past summer was a research mission, we found people in different places who can help us, , and all the groups help each other, correct the growing elitism/exclusionism problem within their local occupy groups, hopefully with dialogue and carefully reasoned arguments, next year we fix these problems. Please don’t be one of them.

I respect you in many ways, and appreciate you took the time to come here and write this. You are one of the most sensible Occupiers I’ve met, and your analysis has always got my mind spinning. That said, I believe that you are off the mark here.

First, let’s define what ‘the movement’ is. Occupy was founded on the premise stopping corruption- right? I believe we both agree on this.

That considered, is it not essential that ‘the movement’ focusses on its own corruption in addition to what happens at the banks, governments and corporations? How could any movement fight corruption if it’s corrupt itself?

If the people in the chart I produced are ‘the movement’, then we’re all in for a lot of trouble. This crowd has produced such a toxic web of hate, slander, dirty tricks, physical violence, social violence, and abuse of those around them that it boggles the mind of everyone who discovers it. If they are being the change they want to see- it’s the change that most of us hope we never see.

There’s a bloody trail of people behind the Activistocrat’s wake. Some were bullied into submission and stay entombed in their submission cults. Others were ostracised from their friends, smeared with the most horrible lies, many of their victim’s lives have been destroyed.

You’re over-simplifying when you say what I’m doing is only about simple tactics. To Quote Harsha Walia- this is “about breaking windows, and about more than breaking windows”. The path we take to effect change will determine the direction of our future. If we change the government using violence and dirty tactics the new system of governance will use violence and dirty tactics on us. I watched this happen first-hand when living in East Europe after the Berlin Wall fell.

Also, the people and organizations in this chart represent old world power bases who are part of the problems we face today. The solutions they are offering are also old world- and their effectiveness was disproved with the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was started by people who probably truly believed they could make a better world. But, they started it with violence, and they ruled with corruption.

It is that same corruption that I write about here on this site. I apologize if it isn’t to your liking- but, change without transparency, with dirty tricks, and with violence, won’t build the better world we all hope for. It’s doing quite the opposite.

Take policing for example. The goal is supposed to be the avoidance of having a police state. This crowd’s quixotic Troyskyite battles like the G20 have only given justification to the expansion of police powers and weaponry. You may respect their right to use their tactics- but, are you willing to live with these sorts of results.

If there’s any country in the world where we have a chance of making non-violent change it is in Canada. The vast majority of the population is with us on non-violence- it’s not like Afghanistan, where the people’s beliefs are engrained in violence and turmoil. Those who take us closer to that world are working on behalf of those who would love the opportunity to violently oppress us.

Consciously or not- these people are working towards the goals the 1%…

This guy is a loser and a coward. Just another pollution soaked inner city slob with no future. Destined to be pushing around a trash filled shopping cart and living under a bridge one day. Life catches up to idiots like that and when it does it’s rarely pretty.

The (A)narchists have issued ‘fatwas’ against journalists in general and individually, justifying their call to violence against the media by asserting news gathering is part of a corporate conspiracy to send violently radical street elements to jail. I’m an investigatory photojournalist in the western Washington region who has been threatened by similar rogue elements, as has Tony Overman, a photojournalist for the Daily Olympian. You are correct: They post screeds on (A)narchist websites around the region (even globally) urging others to attack/injure journalists…which has happened. In Athens, some torched the homes of journalists living in an enclave rich with reporters. They’ve injured a number of journalists covering street demonstrations in Washington, et al.

It has gotten to the point some journalist are arming themselves for their own protection. e.g. Tony Overman was cornered, attacked, spray painted, and threatened with being thrown off the 4th Ave. bridge in Olympia a couple of years ago because an Evergreen State College professor told the youth in a violent street demonstration Tony was ‘working for the police, trying to get the kids arrested, and to STOP him!’ The thugs involved harassed Tony over many months, stalking him eventually to his home one night when they vandalized it and his car. Tony later admitted he was sufficiently frightened on that occasion to sit up the rest of the night with a shotgun in his lap. Tony had covered the war in Bosnia, but stated this was more disturbing, more frightening to him personally. All journalists and anyone seriously concerned about the public’s right to news coverage needs to take a stand against self appointed violently inclined political radicals who assault, bully, injure, and intimidate the press regardless of the views the media may/may not have on any particular issue. The reporting of the alleged crime and assistance to the police in arresting the violent perpetrator is appropriate. Journalism is not ‘snitching’, and self defense or holding assailants accountable is not ‘snitching’.

“Journalism is the printing of what someone doesn’t want published. Everything else is Public Relations.” -George Orwell-

[…] Krajina has also been actively fighting with Jonah Schein’s beloved Ontario Coalition for Poverty (OCAP)- a ‘militant’ group who are closely tied with the unions, Common Cause, and the city’s ragtag groups of anarchists. Here you can see her having a temper tantrum after City Councillor Kristyn Wong-Tam refused to accept an audience with anarchists whose home burned down on anarchist anti-nuclear campaigner “Flagpole” Alex Balch’s beloved George Street. […]